


You Will Find What You Seek

by alemara



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-25
Updated: 2012-10-25
Packaged: 2017-11-17 00:52:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alemara/pseuds/alemara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the 2010 I Need My Fics Exchange.</p><p>
  <i>It's Drinian who finally finds his king, down by a cave on the beach, barefoot in the surf with his shoes in one hand and the other shading his eyes.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Will Find What You Seek

It's Drinian who finally finds his king, down by a cave on the beach, barefoot in the surf with his shoes in one hand and the other shading his eyes.  
  
"Your Majesty?" It comes out as softly as the gruff man can make it, though perhaps still too harshly, as he watches the line of Caspian's shoulders rise and fall. Fifteen, Drinian thinks, is too young to be saddled with the responsibilities of a country, and Narnia is still a country in chaos. The courtyard of Cair Paravel is filled to the brim with construction workers and complainents: Telmarines with real or imagined grievances, Animals and Dwarves and untold others with ancient grudges brought to light by the reformation, or newfound territory issues, and they all want to speak directly to Caspian.  
  
"We fought beside him," say the Animals and Old Narnians. "We sheltered him, we fed him, we were loyal, let us see him now!"  
  
"We raised him," argue the Telmarines. "He is our blood, he was our Prince before he was Narnia's King. Let him settle this!"  
  
Is it any surprise that Caspian slips away as often as possible, when he can no longer stand the shouting and the confusion and the unending demands? If Drinian had his choice, he would turn a blind eye to the footprints which dimple the sand and let the King come back in his own time, but he, like Caspian, is a servant of Narnia, and just now Narnia's demands are too loud to be ignored.  
  
Still, he stands for a little while in silence while his king--just a boy, still slim as a sapling though growing tall now and with a man’s strength broadening his shoulders--looks out across the glittering water. Caspian's eyes are grey and keen and seem to see further than Drinian's own, seeing solutions which had appeared impossible or patterns which are visible to Drinian only after they have been pointed out with great patience.  
  
"What do you think is out there, Drinian?"  
  
Drinian shifts and the sand shifts beneath him. He has to squint at the Eastern Sea, its waves filled with flickers of white light, and he shakes his head as he does. "I can't say for certain. Islands, surely: some of them are charted and we're looking to restore trade with them, but beyond? Only Aslan knows, King Caspian. Certainly, I do not."  
  
He, looking out at the horizon far beyond, doesn't see the small smile curving Caspian's somber mouth, does not note the way it lightens his quiet grey eyes. Drinian, the consummate sailor, laconic until plied with ale and then capable of extraordinary tales filled with adventure and a deep romance Caspian would never have believed existed in his captain's heart; he neither understands nor tries to understand the strange lightness of his king which allows for smiles and laughter when no jokes are told. "I wonder," says Caspian. "The end of the world, perhaps? Or another country, like Narnia. I wonder."  
  
What Caspian desperately wishes to know is not whether land lies far to the East or if the water simply drops in a never-ending sheet over the edge of the world itself, but whether there might be a door, there. Perhaps it won't look like a door, but it will open - he'll find a way to open it - and beyond the door, there _would_ be another world. Peter's world, Edmund's and Susan's. Lucy's world. He'll step through, be in a place where he is no longer king, no longer prince or lord, but merely Caspian. And perhaps, perhaps, he’ll see them again: Peter with his flashing smile and Edmund, quieter but no less strong. Queen Susan, with her voice sweet as the ringing of a silver bell, and Lucy.  
  
Lucy, the gay and golden-haired, who had laughed and swung him into the dance.  
  
As a child (even now he no longer thinks of himself as a child) he never really seriously considered the fact that he would be King one day, when Miraz had died, preferably of old age. He had known it as one knows and irrefutable fact; as he knew the sun would rise and that when you drop a rock, it falls to earth, but he had never desired the position or power, had never realized until the moment his uncle lay limp on the duel grounds that he had been trained and prepared and honed for kingship all his life.  
  
It unsettles him that Miraz so desired this position, this responsibility, that he murdered his own brother. In Caspian's mind, anyone who longs to be King to such an extent is hardly going to be able to put himself and his own desires aside, would never be able to put love of country and subjects above love of self.  
  
It is hard, he reflects, but at least he has the satisfaction of knowing he never wanted to be King. Not the way Miraz had.  
  
"Drinian."  
  
His advisor steps to his side. "My lord."  
  
"You have begun designing ships for our navy, have you not?"  
  
Drinian bows. It was the first task Caspian, pale but with a set face, had given him, after the great Kings and Queens of the past had vanished through the strange door without a door and Aslan had left them once more. "Aye. It goes..." His mouth works, and he lets out a breath, trying in vain not to show his frustration. "Slowly. We have no plans to work from. Your uncle the usurper thought it best they be destroyed."  
  
"There are plans," says Caspian, so softly Drinian strains to hear him over the slow rushing waves. "You'll have to be careful, mind. They're very old."  
  
Drinian, stoic and sturdy, cannot quite hide his surprise but keeps it to the mere widening of his eyes, the hint of a frown between his brows. "My lord?"  
  
The sea air is clear and fresh; Caspian breathes it in as if he were never going to take another breath. The wind, laden with salt and water, curls his hair, tugs his tunic, begs him to gambol and play. At fifteen, he is already too old for such things. "The High King showed me a section of the treasury sealed from the air and any water: in it he kept their most precious documents. Most are fragile and some impossible to read, but I think you'll find that at least some of the plans for the _Splendour Hyaline_ can be copied over easily enough."  
  
"My lord--"  
  
Something has changed in Caspian, some quiet strength fills him, leavens his smile; it is inevitable and all-encompassing. He lifts a hand and Drinian hesitates, his eyes on the boy in front of him, whose eyes glow with the same whitelit fire of the waves ahead. "We'll build to those plans, and set out to find what happened to the twelve lords Miraz sent to die alone among the islands. We'll not leave them to waste in forgetfulness and despair, Drinian; by the Lion, we'll rescue them if we can and bring them home once more." He rests his gaze on the silvered edge of the water, where the blue sky steeps gray as the water. "By then Cair Paravel will be rebuilt and Narnia will be stable once more; enough that I can leave it to the stewards for the duration of the voyage."  
  
When he turns, his eyes are piercing, sea-gray and fired with purpose. "We'll sail to the very edge of the world itself, Captain, see the final end of the world. As you say: who knows what we may find there?"  
  
Drinian finds himself swept under his king's purpose, no more able to dissent to Caspian than he can tell the waves to cease their endless roll. A smile, rusty and bare, crinkles his face, sharpens the faded blue of his eyes. "Aye, lord."  
  
He leaves Caspian alone with the tide and the wheeling gulls and the glass-coated waves with their wheedling whisper, leaves him with feet sinking into white sand and wind continuing its playful banter with hair and clothes. "Who knows?" Caspian asks the sea, the far-reaching horizon. He thinks he can see a square sail full-bellied with wind, a gilded hull cutting through the flakes of light like white lilies on the water. Narnia needs him to be king, and he will be...until the _Dawn Treader_ is built.  
  
Then, he will sail and be free. For a while.


End file.
